


Set Alight

by magicofthepen



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Angst, Audio: 03.05 Panacea, F/F, sort of emotional hurt/comfort but it's not that comforting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:14:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27634621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicofthepen/pseuds/magicofthepen
Summary: Romana watches Heartshaven burn.
Relationships: Leela/Romana II
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Set Alight

The smoke burns into Romana’s lungs, the taste sharp and acrid on her lips. She catalogs the chemicals absent-mindedly, turning each one over on her tongue. It’s easier that way, reducing history and memory into a broken string of component parts. It hurts less, she would like to think. 

A wind stirs through this empty place, a breeze scattering through the whirls of smoke, nudging the burning orange of the flames from side to side, around and about, an intricate dance that cannot be controlled. It gusts — a sudden burst — and Romana blinks against the sting of ash in her eyes, flinches from the sharp sparks that flicker on the edges of her sleeves and die. 

Leela is coughing next to her, chest heaving, and that at last, startles her into movement. They are still too close to the House. 

“Follow me,” she murmurs, and her hand finds Leela’s automatically, gripping her fingers too tightly as they stumble away from the fire, K9 trundling along behind them. Something roars behind them — a wing collapsing? The roof catching at last, wreathing with flames? Whatever it is, the world flares, and a wave of heat washes over her. Romana drops Leela’s hand and sweeps out her cloak around them, a makeshift shield against any showers of sparks. 

Leela reaches out, gripping her arm, fingers pressed tightly into Romana’s skin. “Are we in danger?”

Romana glances behind her. “No, not imminently. But we should get away from the smoke. I don’t know how far it will carry.” She lowers her arm to her side tentatively. The wind has shifted again, and now the ash and fire is leaning in some other direction. She can feel Leela breathe in deeply next to her, taste the hint of cool freshness around them. Leela’s hand slips down her arm, fingers tangling in hers once more, and it is like an anchor. 

When the fire is far enough away that the only sign is the lingering scent of smoke in the air and the black cloud streaked across the glowing red sunset, Romana pauses to wait for K9 to properly catch up with them. She doesn’t want to look back, but the burning ruins are an eyesore on the landscape, a failure she can’t ignore. She has already said goodbye, she has already decided on her next course of action, and yet her throat is tight with a feeling she can’t quite name. It’s not as if she held a great nostalgia for her rather isolated childhood, and that’s all the old House is, isn’t it? A place of old memories, an old life she has long since outgrown. 

Except, cast out of the Inner Citadel, it was also the last place on Gallifrey she belonged.

Romana blinks, hard, and curses herself for the way her breath catches. She has to sneak back into Elbon’s lab, bring warning of the return of the Dogma virus. She doesn’t have time for _sentiment_. 

“Romana. Are you — ?” Leela’s hand brushes her shoulder, the touch gentle, exploratory. Her fingers slide upwards to cup Romana’s chin, and Romana stills as Leela’s thumb ever so softly caresses her cheek, brushing away tears. “No. You are not alright.” 

The certainty in her voice, the warmth of her touch, the strange intimacy of the gesture even though Leela might not see it as such — Romana counts inside her head, refuses to let any more tears fall, because she is so close to something shattering inside her.

 _It doesn’t matter_ , she should say. 

But Romana turns to look at Leela instead, and that is her mistake. 

Even with bandaged eyes, her expression is penetrating. The lines of her face are hardened by too much war and too much suffering, but there is still a warmth in the purse of her lips, the lift of her cheekbones. There is still a furrow of concern in her brow. She is still looking at Romana so deliberately, her compassion so clear and so undeserved.

The thick, suffocating feeling in her chest _twists_ and without thinking, Romana has placed her own hand over Leela’s, leaning against her soft touch, curling their fingers together. 

Leela smiles, small and sad. “It is only right that you should mourn the loss of your home.”

Romana steps back, a recoil, but she can still feel the imprint of Leela’s warm fingers on her skin. Too much kindness. Too much _forgiveness_. Her losses — the Presidency, her old home — they are what she deserves, for her sins — how she failed to keep Gallifrey safe, how she fell into Pandora’s whispers and left so much destruction burning in her wake. Comfort is a luxury, and one she hasn’t earned.

“I’m not — it’s only an old House. It was empty of anything that mattered, even before I arrived. Overrun with pigrats and a disgraced ex-commander.” Romana sniffs, an attempt at haughtiness. 

Leela curls her fingers back into her palm, her expression unreadable. She says nothing.

The wind has kicked up again, and Romana tugs away the strands of hair that tumble into her eyes. Leela hugs her elbows, goosebumps prickling on her skin now that they are far enough away from fire and the second sun is setting, the sky fading to a dull orange. Chewing her lower lip, Romana unclasps the hook of her cloak, letting the silky fabric slide over her skin. Another luxury. A last remnant of the status she once held, with her presidential robes long since discarded and disposed of somewhere in the Inner Citadel. 

Romana holds out her fistful of fabric to Leela. “I — here, take this.”

“Why?”

“You’re shivering.” 

“The wind does not bother me. I am used to wild open places.” Her voice trembles. “Or I was.”

Now Romana is the one to extend her hand and rest it softly against Leela’s elbow. It feels too calculated a gesture, too meager an attempt at comfort. Touching another person in such a familiar way, it doesn’t come naturally to her. 

Romana swallows, and her thumb brushes against Leela’s skin. She pretends it doesn’t matter, pretends that simple sensation isn’t raising goosebumps on her own arms.

“Please just — ”

“No. You keep your cloak, I do not need it.”

“Alright.” 

But she doesn’t step away and Leela doesn’t either, and somehow her hand has trailed up to Leela’s shoulder. A gray smudge of ash has puddled there, and Romana brushes it off, letting it kick back up into the air. She is two steps closer without realizing it, and when Leela turns to face her, Romana’s gaze flicks to the flakes of ash stuck in the wrinkles of the cloth bandaging her eyes, the way they dust her hair like stained snow. Smoky gray against burnt auburn, like the sky, like her whole world. Something beautiful, something burning.

Romana closes her eyes, the tightness in her chest suddenly suffocating. She needs to say something, anything, to break this silence. 

“How did you find me, out here?” she whispers, too quiet. 

“Find you?”

“You weren’t there, when I was — exiled.” Everything had happened so quickly — her stomach dropping out from underneath her, Braxiatel’s swift departure, Matthias’s final meeting with her, his expression contorted into something between pity and satisfaction.

“I didn’t say where I was going.” She should have. She should have left a path open for Leela to follow, should have trusted — but she has trusted too much in these past days in the loyalty of old friends. And even Leela, who has remained by her side far longer than Romana could have dreamed, even Leela must have her limits.

“There were very few places you _could_ go," Leela says, just as quiet. "That is what K9 said. And when you have no place in the city, of course you would go wherever is most familiar.”

At her words, a memory stirs. Their second-first meeting, when Romana first summoned Leela to her side.

“That’s what you did, isn’t it,” she says. “You tried to join the shobogans, after — ” She swallows back the words. 

“Yes.” Leela says. “My childhood home is far away, but the Outlands felt — familiar. I thought I could find — ” She cuts herself off, too, and something twists between Romana’s hearts. An apology is teetering on her tongue, for insisting Leela come back to the city in the first place, for dragging her into politics and war and more pain that she should have ever borne. 

Leela changes the subject before Romana can speak. “And it was not a far walk from the transmat, to Heartshaven. It was not hard to find you.”

“Still. Thank you." Her voice trembles in spite of herself. “I doubt those in the Inner Citadel would look kindly on you — consorting with an ex-president. You didn't _have_ to come.”

“Romana.” Leela’s voice is nearly a whisper. “Did you really think I would stay long in the Capitol, once they had thrown you out?”

“I — ”

 _No_ , she thinks. _No_ , she hopes.

Her hand is still on Leela’s shoulder, and she curls a thick strand of Leela’s hair between her fingers, picking out pieces of ash with her fingernails. It’s a luxury to have her face hidden, so Leela can’t notice how Romana’s eyes trail over the curve of her neck, the wind-tossed tangle of her hair, the furrow of her brow. It would be so easy to brush her fingers along that gentle curve, cup Leela’s face the way Leela ran her fingers against Romana’s cheek, as if it was something natural, easy. The impulse hums under her skin, hot and dangerous because if she moves, if she dares to narrow the space between them even further —

Her House is drowning in flames. The Citadel gleams in the distance, forbidden. The Presidency is a failed dream, a pedestal she wasn’t able to clamber back on. The Dogma virus is out there on Gallifrey, chewing away at the Time Lords from the inside out. And Romana will try to warn them, try to save them, because all she left to do is _try_. But if she’s honest, there isn’t much of a future left for her on Gallifrey. And Leela is _here_ and Romana is nothing in this world anymore and there is no one else out here on this barren landscape and every place their skin touches is like a spark branding her, and she wants in a way she hasn’t let herself feel in so long, she _wants_ — 

Leela’s hand slips to Romana’s waist, fingers digging into her skin. Her voice is rough, hoarse. “It would not be long before the Time Lords in the Capitol decided that an alien has no right to stay. I would not be surprised if by this time tomorrow, they had thrown me off of this planet, if I had not left the city first. Where else would I go?”

 _Where else_ could _I go?_

 _What_ choice _did I have?_

The unspoken words sear through her, the exhaustion in Leela’s voice sinking into her lungs like another cloud of windblown ash. Of course. Romana is Leela’s last option. Her _best_ chance of survival. 

A disgraced ex-president with no future and a past stained with far too much blood. 

Leela tugs at her waist, her other hand drifting forward, as if to retrace the dried tear tracks on her cheek. But Romana jerks away — dodging the brush of her fingers, hiding her face against Leela's shoulder instead, tensing as Leela’s arms fold around her.

She can’t help but breathe in the ash in Leela’s hair, the leather of her clothes, the dizzying and all too human combination of chemicals in her skin. But she shoves all the sensory information to some corner of her mind that can absently turn it over, cataloguing one impression after the other with a clinical detachment. It hurts less, she would like to think. 

Romana withdraws quickly from the stiff embrace, her face flushed. She moves to retrieve her cloak from where it had slipped to the ground without her realizing and doesn’t look back at Leela. She doesn’t want to know what expression lingers on her friend’s face.

“Thank you, then.” Romana clears her throat, hating the inadequate taste of the words in her mouth. “It’s a risk for you to return to the city, as well, and I _am_ grateful for your help.”

Leela is silent for a long time, as Romana readjusts the cloak on her shoulders and fiddles with the hook to avoid looking up. She inhales the night air and tries to ignore the churning her stomach. (Leela’s fingers on her hips and her breath on Romana’s neck and _no, forget it._ )

“We should keep moving, if we wish to bring the news of the virus to the Capitol tonight.” Leela says finally, and her voice betrays nothing. 

“Yes.” Romana lifts her chin, lets the weight of the fabric settle around her shoulders. A moment later K9 rejoins them, and they continue along the path towards the nearest transmat back into the Inner Citadel, back into a world none of them are welcome in, back towards the last hope they have of saving this planet from decay and ruin. 

She inhales and wonders how long it will be before she takes a breath that doesn’t taste like ash.


End file.
